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Tommy Westphall, portrayed by Chad Allen, is a minor character from the drama television series ''St. Elsewhere'', which ran on NBC from October 26, 1982, to May 25, 1988. Westphall, who is autistic, took on major significance in ''St. Elsewhere''s final episode, "The Last One", where the common interpretation of that finale is that the entire ''St. Elsewhere'' storyline exists only within Westphall's imagination.〔 As characters from ''St. Elsewhere'' have appeared on other television shows and those shows' characters appeared on more shows, and so on, a "Tommy Westphall Universe" hypothesis was postulated by Dwayne McDuffie where a significant amount of fictional episodic television exists within Tommy Westphall's imagined fictional universe. =="The Last One"== The 1988 final episode of ''St. Elsewhere'', known as "The Last One", ended in a context very different from every other episode of the series. As the camera pans away from the snow beginning to fall at St. Eligius hospital, the scene changes to Donald Westphall's autistic son Tommy, along with Daniel Auschlander in an apartment building. Westphall arrives home from a day's work, and wears clothes suggesting that he is a construction worker. "Auschlander" is revealed to be Donald's father, and thus Tommy's grandfather. Donald laments to his father, "I don't understand this autism. I talk to my boy, but...I'm not even sure if he ever hears me...Tommy's locked inside his own world. Staring at that toy all day long. What does he think about?" The toy is revealed to be a snow globe with a replica of St. Eligius hospital inside. Tommy shakes the snow globe, and is told by his father to come and wash his hands, after having left the snow globe on the family's television set.〔 One of the more common interpretations of this scene is that as Tommy shakes the snow globe in the apartment, he also makes it snow at the "fictional" St. Eligius. His father and grandfather also seem to work at this hospital even though neither man has ever experienced such a role. By implication this interpretation suggests the total series of events in the series ''St. Elsewhere'' had been a product of Tommy Westphall's imagination. ''NewsRadio'' paid homage to the "snowglobe" scene at the end of its third season fantasy-themed episode "Daydream". ''30 Rock'' did likewise in the closing scene of the series finale, "Last Lunch", which begins with the GE Building in a snow globe being stared at by perpetual rube, Kenneth Parcell, but then turns the meme around to make the series the distant-future creation of Liz Lemon's great-granddaughter with whom Kenneth is taking a pitch meeting. ''Childrens Hospital'' paid homage to the ''St. Elsewhere'' finale in its sixth webisode, in which everything that happens in Childrens Hospital turns out to take place inside a Puerto Rican little person's flatus that Rob Corddry (playing himself) is dreaming about. He wakes up suddenly, and is told by Megan Mullally (playing a character named "Megan Mullally") to "remember to set the snowglobe," and he does so by shaking it before going back to sleep. The 1997-1999 TV series ''Working'' also referenced the snow globe ending in the beginning of its second season, where a character picks up a snow globe, shakes it up, and suddenly the cast changed for the rest of the series. This was done as an explanation as to why old characters were no longer there, and new characters were in the office, without any further reason. ==The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis== The Tommy Westphall universe hypothesis, an idea discussed among some television fans, makes the claim that not only does ''St. Elsewhere'' take place within Tommy's mind, but so do numerous other television series which are directly and indirectly connected to ''St. Elsewhere'' through fictional crossovers and spin-offs, resulting in a large fictional universe taking place entirely within Tommy's mind. In 2002 writer Dwayne McDuffie wrote ''Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere'' for the Slush Factory website. In a 2003 article published on BBC News Online, ''St. Elsewhere'' writer Tom Fontana was quoted as saying, "Someone did the math once... and something like 90 percent of all () television took place in Tommy Westphall's mind. God love him." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tommy Westphall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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